"Pew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for whenever I'd raise my eyes there was Phil Gillis smiling at me from the judge's pew, and opposite were Dave and Aggie Stebbins, staring as though they had never seen the like of me before, and every now and then old Deacon Pettengil, who sits in front of us, would turn and peer ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... lived at peace and held their peace in the presence of their prattling neighbors. On Sundays, togged in black gowns on which were ornaments of jet, they worshiped in the Congregational Chapel; and as they stood up in their pew, you saw that Olwen was as the tall trunk of a tree at whose shoulders are the stumps of chopped branches, and that Lisbeth's body was as a billhook. Once they journeyed to Aberporth and they laid a wreath ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... secured a good pupil for your son-in-law." Timpson had a large family of daughters; Mr. Riley felt for him; besides, Louisa Timpson's face, with its light curls, had been a familiar object to him over the pew wainscot on a Sunday for nearly fifteen years; it was natural her husband should be a commendable tutor. Moreover, Mr. Riley knew of no other schoolmaster whom he had any ground for recommending in preference; why, then, should be not recommend ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... "Lavengro" a very interesting account of the boy Borrow being taken twice every Sunday to the fine parish church at East Dereham, where, from a corner of a spacious pew, he would fix his eyes on the dignified high-Church rector and the dignified high-Church clerk, "from whose lips would roll many a portentous word descriptive of the wondrous works of the Most High." The rector ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... from key to key, and had an opportunity to study his moth-eaten gown and the black thread mittens that he joined together in prayer, and lifted up with a reverent solemnity in the act of benediction. Hermiston pew was a little square box, dwarfish in proportion with the kirk itself, and enclosing a table not much bigger than a footstool. There sat Archie, an apparent prince, the only undeniable gentleman and the only great heritor in the parish, taking his ease in the only pew, for no other in the kirk ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... side by side in the Milo pew at St. Giles; and after Sue's sixteenth birthday, though Wallace might have to be left at home with his father, Mrs. Milo did not permit her daughter to accept invitations, even to the home of a girl friend, unless she herself was included. It ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... in the old pulpit, his shapely, well-kept hand hanging over the edge in one of his most characteristic gestures; and the autumn sunlight, falling through the plain glass windows, shone on his temples. Immediately below him, in a front pew, sat his mother, a dried little old woman, with beady black eyes and a pointed chin, which jutted out from between the stiff taffeta strings of her poke bonnet. She gazed upward, clasping her Prayer-book in her black woollen gloves, which were darned in the fingers; and though she appeared to ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... disagreeable things: you have shoveled sand, as a boy, for supper, and you have eaten roast dog in a gold-diggers' camp. You have stood casting up figures for ten hours at a time, and you have sat through Methodist sermons for the sake of looking at a pretty girl in another pew. All that is rather stiff, as we say. But at any rate you have done something and you are something; you have used your will and you have made your fortune. You have not stupified yourself with debauchery and ...
— The American • Henry James
... Offertory is an important part of worship. It is not an impertinence, but stands in the line of duties along side of prayer and singing. To give money each time you go to church, and in the appointed way will bring blessings from God. Pew rent is not "giving" in this sense, any more than paying the butter bill or for a seat at the opera house. We refer to the offering to God for religious or charitable purposes, regularly through the Offertory in church. So your alms will go up with your prayers ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... reputation for integrity. But he is president of the Koniwasset branch railroad, and a leading director of the Koniwasset coal mines, and a large operator in stocks, and lives in one of the finest houses in Wheathedge, and keeps the handsomest carriage, and hires the most expensive pew, and it was considered quite a card, I believe, to get him to take the presidency of the Board ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... so happened that although Theodore had been for years a member of the same Sabbath-school with this young lady, and had seen her sitting in the Hastings' pew in church on every Sabbath day, still this was the first time that he had met her face to face, near enough to speak to her, since that evening so long ago when they conversed together on a momentous subject. Theodore's knowledge of the world and social ...
— Three People • Pansy
... accustomed seat, and they moved from theirs. The magnitude of their wrongs would admit of nothing like routine or monotony. The chairs were pushed back, and I saw five tall, slim figures standing erect, in straight black gowns, white kerchiefs and spotless caps. They were devout Lutherans, and their pew at the Sunday service was never vacant; but I had never seen them ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... was remarkably handsome and certainly justified the pride with which the villagers exhibited it to all strangers. The massive mahogany pew-doors were elaborately carved and surmounted by small crosses; the tall, arched windows were of superb stained glass, representing the twelve apostles; the floor and balustrade of the altar, and the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... at the morning service. The pew-opener found him sitting there dead, when all had ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Bumpkin, I lost sight of the gentleman, I lost sight of the crowd; an indefinable sensation of delight overpowered my senses. Where was I? I had but a moment before been in a Court of Justice, with crowds of gaping idlers; with prosaic-looking gentlemen in horsehair wigs; with gentlemen in a pew with papers before them ready to take down the proceedings. Now it seemed as if I must be far away in the distant country, where all was calm ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... facing audience, a long seat with a high back and pew- like ends. At the rise of the curtain, Thomas Rigby, the rubicund landlord, is lighting with a taper the candles that stand on the mantelshelf, the buttons on his plum-colored waistcoat twinkling in the gleam. He has only lighted one when the door is pushed open, and there enter two young ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... entering the church, and seeing a stranger in my pew, I could not express the feeling of joy that filled my soul, upon discovering this was the same woman, now come to the house of God, having exchanged masters, and forsaken the territory of Satan, anxious to become the servant of Christ, and receive ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... pew was so high that none of the children, except Katy, could touch the floor, even with the point of a toe. This made their feet go to sleep; and when they felt the queer little pin-pricks which drowsy feet use to rouse themselves with, they would slide off the seat, and sit on the benches to ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... he gazed at the friendly faces round him, and reflected sadly that he was about to leave for ever the little world in which he had been so happy. General Bramble was standing gravely at attention, and singing as solemnly as if he were in his pew ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... in the house, well forward in the middle aisle, and they had it all to themselves. There was not another pew in church that morning which seemed to attract so large a share of the attention of the congregation. Mrs. Myers and Almira were several pews behind, and on the other side of the house; and there had been no opportunity ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... to go to such a dear old church, in the Isle of Wight," said Betty. "You could look out of the open door by our pew and see the old churchyard, and look away over the green downs and the blue sea. You could see the red poppies in the fields, and hear the ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... is to say, in all relations of life not pertaining to eating—Mr. Port was very much what was to be expected of him from his birth and from his environment. Every Sunday, with an exemplary piety, he sat solitary in the great square pew in St. Peter's which had been occupied by successive generations of Ports ever since the year 1761, when the existing church was completed. Every other day of the week, from his late breakfast-time for some hours onward, he sat at his own particular window of the ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... fellow-townsmen to look owlish and uplifted about her. He had no rooted dislike for pretty women; he even didn't deny that gay girls had their place in the world, but they ought to be kept in their place. He was born a Presbyterian, just as he was born a McKann. He sat in his pew in the First Church every Sunday, and he never missed a presbytery meeting when he was in town. His religion was not very spiritual, certainly, but it was substantial and concrete, made up of good, hard convictions and opinions. It had something to do with citizenship, with whom ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... the whole I find, 'Tis not a world, but chaos of mankind. Since Sundays have no balls, the well-dressed belle Shines in the pew, but smiles to hear of Hell; And casts an eye of sweet disdain on all Who listen less to Collins than St. Paul. Atheists have been but rare; since Nature's birth Till now, she-atheists ne'er appeared on ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... undecipherable inscriptions, she wondered if those they covered had led happy, contented lives, or if they were afflicted with unquiet thoughts, unsatisfied longings, and dull despair, as she was. The church was empty and cool; she walked inside, to sit in the first pew she chanced upon. It was the first time that she had sat all alone in the church; its venerable appearance now cried aloud for recognition and appreciation. As if to accentuate its antiquity, some of the aisles and walls bore the disfiguring evidences of an unfinished electric ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... of backer, or best-man, to the bridegroom; while a little limp pew-opener in a soft bonnet like a baby's, made a feint of being the bosom friend of Miss Skiffins. The responsibility of giving the lady away devolved upon the Aged, which led to the clergyman's being unintentionally ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... his family were in their pew and the minister was speaking. Prescott paused a few moments at the entrance to the aisle. No one paid any attention to him; soldiers were too common a sight to be noticed. He felt in the inside pocket of his waistcoat and drew forth the sealed envelope. Then he slipped softly ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... and jacinths which he had hastily removed from various parts of his person. His letters display his solicitous love of jewels, velvets, and embroidered damasks. Mr. Jeaffreson has lately found among the Middlesex MSS. that as early as April 26, 1584, a gentleman named Hugh Pew stole at Westminster and carried off Walter Raleigh's pearl hat-band and another jewelled article of attire, valued together in money of that time at 113l. The owner, with characteristic promptitude, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... morning Sir W. Batten, Pen, and myself, went to church to the churchwardens, to demand a pew, which at present could not be given us; but we are resolved to have one built. So we staid, and heard Mr. Mills, a very good minister. Home to dinner, where my wife had on her new petticoat that she bought yesterday, which indeed is a very fine cloth and a line lace; but that being of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... second time; his teeth chattered louder; his cheeks became clammy and death-like. "My brethren!" stammered he a third time emphatically, and his knees fell together. A deep groan echoed from his mother's pew. His wildness increased. "My mother!" exclaimed the preacher. They were the last words he ever uttered in a pulpit. The shaking and the agony began in his heart, and his body caught the contagion. He covered ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... in some places for gentlemen who may be already in a slip or pew to deploy into the aisle, on the arrival of a lady who may desire admittance, allow her to enter, and then resume their seats. This is a very ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... Lucy's decidin' to be married at home on account o' the blue bengaline. She says that's a extra turn o' the ice-cream-freezer handle as she never counted on havin' to submit to. She says she naturally supposed if Hiram got married as she 'd sit in the front pew for once in her life, 'n' see the bride's dress good, 'n' hear the answers plain, 'n' now instid her only child, as she 's loved like a mother ever since he was born, is goin' to be married in a parlor as private as if he was bein' buried ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... safe exit of the latter. This custom prevailed from habit until a late date in many churches in New England, all the men, after the benediction and the exit of the parson, walking out in advance of the women. So also the custom of the men always sitting at the "head" or door of the pew arose from the early necessity of their always being ready to seize their arms and rush unobstructed to fight. In some New England village churches to this day, the man who would move down from his end of the pew and let a ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... to be seen. Meanwhile she had not sent the paint box, and he feared it would never come. He fancied she must be the Squire's little daughter, but he was not sure, and she certainly was not in the big pew, where the back of the Squire's red head and Lady Louisa's aquiline nose were alone visible. She was a dear little soul, he thought. He wondered why she called him Bogy. Perhaps it was a way little ladies had ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... My intrepid aviators to reserve a pew for Me intact among the ruins of Notre Dame ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... oh come with me and dwell— But stop, for there's the bell. Oh Peace! for thee I go and sit in churches On Wednesday, when there's very few In loft or pew— Another ring, the tarts are come from Birch's. Oh Peace! for thee I have avoided marriage— Hush! there's a carriage. Oh Peace! thou art the best of earthly goods— The five Miss Woods! Oh Peace! thou art the goddess I adore— There come some more. Oh Peace! thou child of solitude ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... churches generally were hostile to the movement and methods of the anti-slavery agitation. There was an intense prejudice against the blacks. The only negro in town was a servant girl, who used to sit solitary and alone in the colored people's pew in the gallery. When three families of black folks moved into a deserted house in Boscawen, near Beaver Dam Brook, and their children made their appearance in Corser Hill school, a great commotion at once ensued in the town. After the Sunday evening prayer-meeting, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... dash there among the gentry, I reckon, and perhaps receive more attention than the orator himself. They'll think you are some fellow who has got into the wrong pew." ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... piquant?—that cart-load of goodness, the old Doctor, that sweet little saint, and Madame Faubourg St. Germain shaken up together! Fancy her listening with well-bred astonishment to a critique on the doings of the unregenerate, or flirting that little jewelled fan of hers in Mrs. Scudder's square pew of a Sunday! Probably they will carry her to the weekly prayer-meeting, which of course she will contrive some fine French subtilty for admiring, and find revissant. I fancy I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... droning of the lay brother is most happily expressed. Accompanied by her child and mother, the unfortunate victim of his seduction is here again introduced, endeavouring to enter the church, and forbid the banns. The opposition made by an old pew-opener, with her bunch of keys, gave the artist a good opportunity for indulging his taste in the burlesque, and ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... I think, has so imperceptibly retired from the Church of England. For all the interest it excited, the secession of this extremely brilliant person might have been the secession of a sacristan or a pew-opener. He did not so much "go over to Rome" as sidle away from the ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... last, I took the responsibility of telling husbands how they ought to treat their wives—and, though I noticed that some of the men squirmed a little in their pew, they endured it well—I now take the responsibility of telling how wives ought to treat their husbands. I hope your domestic alliance was so happily formed that while married life may have revealed in him some frailties that you did not suspect, it has also displayed excellencies that more than ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... their two armchairs and the fire—the dying fire. He must, she supposed, be imagining that they were married, seeing her at the head of the table, in the family pew. She wondered if he would have let her re-set the family jewels. Perhaps his mind had reached the nursery. He was dreaming of children, his children, ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... sanitary reform, promoted by governments, has on the whole been a great blessing seems to me scarcely open to reasonable question, but many of the best judges are of opinion that it may easily be pushed to dangerous extremes. Pew things are more curious than to observe how rapidly during the past generation the love of individual liberty has declined; how contentedly the English race are submitting great departments of their ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... existing,' said Elizabeth, 'since Papa has made his great horrid pew in the chancel into open seats.—Do not you remember it, Kate? and how naughty you used to be, when Margaret left off sitting there with us, and there was no one to see what we were about—oh! and there is a great fat Patience on a monument on the ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the best; and perhaps, if we were bent upon finding out the truth, the simplest way would be to watch the sales of the new edition of the poems of Beddoes, which Messrs. Routledge have lately added to the 'Muses' Library.' How many among Apollo's pew-renters, one wonders, have ever read Beddoes, or, indeed, have ever heard of him? For some reason or another, this extraordinary poet has not only never received the recognition which is his due, but has failed almost entirely to receive any recognition whatever. If ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... rub. But now, the crisis being safely passed, I may tell that they would—that they very nearly did—and that the thing that prevented them was nothing more nor less than the moving of the Customs pew in the British Legation Chapel from the front of the church to the back. So do great events sometimes ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... and betook himself to prayer, when the sound of his voice was nearly drowned by the people weeping, and he came down from the pulpit and passed up and down through the church, exhorting and directing them, as many as three and four persons being in an agony of spirit in every pew. Even after the service closed, the cries and groans of anxious persons could be heard at a considerable distance up and down the harbour. At Harbor Grace, Port a Grave, Bay Roberts and other places, similar scenes were witnessed, ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... custom was still observed at Hawsted in 1784, and in Eden's time, 1797, the bursars of New College, Oxford, presented each of their tenants with two pairs, which the recipients displayed on the following Sunday at church by conspicuously hanging their hands over the pew to show their neighbours they had paid their rent. In this account of the Hawsted harvest the large number of hired men and the few customary tenants is noteworthy as a sign of the times, for before the Black Death the harvest work ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... saw Donald and Elsie in the courts of Zion, and great peace was upon their brows. When I ascended the pulpit stairs, they were already in their ancestral pew, now the property of Hector Campbell, who had abandoned it with joy, only asking that he be given one in the gallery from which ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... Visitors and the Hospital officials sit in transverse pews of an old-fashioned shape, which run down the sides of the walls. The organ, presented by Major Ingram in 1691-92, is in a gallery at the west end, and immediately beneath the gallery on the right-hand side is the Governor's pew. ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... the broad aisle, she saw nothing in the building or the people around her that was not strange no familiar face, no familiar thing. But it was a church, and she was alone, quite alone in the midst of that crowd; and she went up to the empty pew and ensconced herself in the far corner of it, with a curious feeling of quiet and of being at home. She was no sooner seated, however, than, leaning forward as much as possible to screen herself from observation, bending her head upon her knees, she burst into ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... live; If yo're poor, it's mooast likely they'll pass, An call where fowk's summat to give. Yo may have a trifle o' sense, An yo may be booath upright an trew, But that's nowt, if yo can't stand th' expense Ov a whole or a pairt ov a pew. ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... a little diverted from his tortures by the arrival of the Whipples. From the Penniman pew he could glance across to a side pew and observe a line of repeated Whipple noses, upon which for some moments he was enabled to speculate forgetfully. Once—years ago, it seemed to him—he had heard talk of the Whipple nose. This one ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... church in Reading," answered the old lady; "where they had a grand pew lined with crimson cloth. They never missed going twice; they came in their coach-and-four; they did not knot on Sundays, but I can hardly say ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... Brer Rastus, an' it seem like de dus' sorter shet out de pannyrammer. Fuddermo', my lim's got ter akin, mo' speshully w'en I year Brer Sim an' Brer Dick a snortin' and a skufflin' under de benches like ez dey wuz sorter makin' der way ter my pew. So I kinder hump myse'f an' scramble out, and de fus man w'at I seed was a pleeceman, an' he had a nigger 'rested, an' de fergiven name er dat nigger ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... and for the decency and beauty, I am assured, it is the most remarkable Parish Church that this nation affords. He lived to see it so wainscotted, as to be exceeded by none; and, by his order, the Reading pew and Pulpit were a little distant from each other, and both of an equal height; for he would often say, "They should neither have a precedency or priority of the other; but that prayer and preaching, being equally useful, might ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... exclusive. Dr. Schlesien heard remarks, upon which his weighty Teutonic mind sat crushingly. Do these English care one bit for music?—for anything finer than material stuffs?—what that man Durance calls, 'their beef, their beer, and their pew in eternity'? His wrath at their babble and petty brabble doubted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... waiting at the altar. Madame and Aunt Matilda sat down together in a front pew; there was a moment's solemn hush, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... her for this, when after an absence of several Sabbaths Mrs. Foster again occupied her pew in the church of which ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... Raggles. "Here's a go! Squash up, and we shall bag the front pew. Duff's got five-penn'orth of chocolate creams, so we ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... in the church at the funeral service. She sat at the inner end of the pew with Hilda beside her. The coffin had stood before the altar all night, with the lamps lit all night, and Rosalie believed her father had stayed with it all night. He was struck right down by what had happened, Rosalie's father. She had heard him, when Anna lay on the bed, and he crouched ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... meeting-house, would turn round to look for him more than once during the service. At first there was only the top of little Nan Prince's prim best bonnet or hood to be seen, unless it was when she stood up in prayer-time, but soon the bright eyes rose like stars above the horizon of the pew railing, and next there was the whole well-poised little head, and the tall child was possessed by a sense of propriety, and only ventured one or two discreet glances at her ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... mother spoke, Patience could see Nancy's dark harsh old face peering over the pew, where she and some of her nation sat together, Sabbath days, and the image made her shudder in spite of its environments. However, she finally put on her little sunbonnet and set forth. It was a lovely summer twilight; ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... this, Edmond, this is the man of business who purchased his game in the City, and vied with all in the excellence of his claret. The man who courted your aunt, begot hale and whole children, who sits in his pew and is respected. That beneath my skull should lurk such monstrous things! You are my godchild, Edmond. Actions are mere sediment, and words—froth, froth. Let the thoughts be clean, my boy; the thoughts must be clean; thoughts make the man. You may never ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... calls for testimonials and all the folks look at our pew, I feel ready to sink through the floor for shame," sighed Mollie. "If father would ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... your braid close, and wind it around your head, and put on your black tunic, and you shall sit in our pew. Besides, anyway, it would be proper for a person of China to wear his braid down his back after the custom of ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth
... inferior order of creation. At hotels and places of public resort they were refused entertainment. On railroads and steamboats they were herded off by themselves in mean and uncomfortable cars. If welcomed in churches at all, they were carefully restricted to the negro pew. As in the Southern States to-day, no distinction was made among them in these respects by virtue of dress or manners or culture or means; but all were alike discriminated against because of their dark skins. Some of Douglass's abolition friends, among whom ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... within rather than the man without. He turned from his position at the altar (where he was fulfilling his duties as best man to Sir Nigel Merriton) and glanced back over the curve of his shoulder to where a girl sat, bending forward in the empty pew, her face alight, her eyes, beneath the curving hat-brim, swimming with tears.... She nodded as he saw her, and smiled, the promise of their future together curving the sweet lips into gracious, womanly lines. Behind her, on guard as usual, and gay ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... unanimously occupied in carrying out the precept of their reverend pastor's text, "Come unto me ... and I will give Rest"—save only those two vigilant old ladies, perhaps pillars of the edifice, and the clerk to whose interest in the sleeping nymph of the next pew I have already alluded—are ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... green patches down the white walls where the rains had got in. So the handful of people that came to church were glad enough to get the other side of the screen in the chancel, where at least the pew floors were boarded over, and the panelling of oak-work kept off ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... was small, the congregation smaller, and the clergyman a little weary of the empty benches. But the two faces in the Manstey pew were so bright, so vivid with the vigor of youth, that his jaded mind freshened to meet the ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... need for further particulars with that crowd, and they simply howled. Ma led me up to our pew, allowing that she'd tend to me Monday for disgracing her in public that ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... was the speaker for the day. Miss Minerva rarely missed a service in her own church. She was always on hand at the Love Feast and the Missionary Rally and gave liberally of her means to every cause. She was sitting in her own pew between Billy and Jimmy, Mr. and Mrs. Garner having remained at home. Across the aisle from her sat Frances Black, between her father and mother; two pews in front of her were Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton, with Lina on the outside next the aisle. The good Major ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... Billy Bones is haunted by the dread of "a seafaring man with one leg." Captain Flint, we are told, was a brave man; "he was afraid of none, not he, only Silver—Silver was that genteel." Or, again, where John himself says, "there was some that was feared of Pew, and some that was feared of Flint; but Flint his own self was feared of me. Feared he was, and proud. They was the roughest crew afloat was Flint's. The devil himself would have been feared to go to sea with them. Well, now, I will tell you. I'm not a ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... afraid of hotels, but not of the church. I reasoned vaguely that it was a dark day, and darker in the church, and so I went in at the Church Alley entrance and sat near the north door. No one noticed me. I sat still in a high-backed pew, well hid, and wondering what was the matter with me. It was curious that a doctor, and a man of my intelligence, should have been long in guessing a ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... pew was one of the old-fashioned high ones, and Milly's head did not reach the top of it. Very quiet and silent she was during the service, and very particular to follow her uncle's example in every respect, though she nearly upset his gravity at the ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... got a bottle-green Sunday-coat out of the oak-press that matched the bedstead, and put the house-key into his pocket, and went to church too. Now, for years past he had not failed to take his place, week by week, in the pew that was traditionally appropriated to the use of the Darwins of Dovecot. In such an hour the sordid cares of the secret panel weighed less heavily on his soul, and the things that are not seen came nearer—the ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... supersensitive nerves annoyingly. After a while he grew more accustomed to it, but he did not like it, and he said so loudly enough to bring him a stern glance from his father and smiles from some of the people in the pew ahead. During the brief sermon he ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... the baronet, was the dignity and composure of a mind at peace with itself and mankind. His step was rather more deliberate than common; his eye rested on the pavement, and on turning into his pew, as he prepared to kneel, in the first humble petition of our beautiful service, he raised it towards the altar with an expression of benevolence and reverence, that spoke contentment, not ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... with her handkerchief, thankful that she was surrounded by strangers by whom her reddened eyes would pass unnoticed. Then rising to her feet, she turned to lift the furs which hung on the back of the pew, and met the brown eyes of a girl who had been sitting behind her the whole ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... pew-letting. The nearer you sat to the pulpit, the higher the price of the pew, and the better your social position. Mrs. Caldwell was obliged to content herself with a cheap seat in one of the side aisles near the door, so the vicar had never called on her. He only called ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Professor at the Breakfast-table The Poet at the Breakfast Table Over the Teacups Elsie Venner The Guardian Angel A Mortal Antipathy Pages from an Old Volume of Life Bread and the Newspaper My Hunt after "The Captain" The Inevitable Trial Cinders from Ashes The Pulpit and the Pew Medical Essays Homeopathy and its Kindred Delusions The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science Border Lines of Knowledge in Some Provinces of Medical Science Scholastic and Bedside Teaching ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... In addition to the title of "Sieur," baronies are created in Canada, foremost among them that of the Le Moynes of Montreal. The feudal seignior now has his coat of arms emblazoned on the church pew where he worships, on his coach door, and on the stone entrance to his mansion. The habitants are compelled to grind their wheat at his mill, to use his great bake oven, to patronize his tannery. The seigniorial mansion itself is taking on more of pomp. Cherry ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... induced F. Hopkinson Smith to tell the best stories he had ever heard in his wide travels in "The Man in the Arm Chair"; he got Kate Douglas Wiggin to tell a country church experience of hers in "The Old Peabody Pew"; and Jean Webster her knowledge of almshouse life in ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... suppose the tendency to choke and sneeze is always enhanced by the circumstance that one's life may depend on keeping still, just as yawning becomes irresistible where to yawn would be social ruin, and just as one is sure to sleep in church, if one sits in a conspicuous pew. At other times, some unguarded motion would create a splashing which seemed, in the tension of my senses, to be loud enough to be heard at Richmond, although it really mattered not, since there are fishes in those rivers which make as much noise on special occasions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... seat me away back by the door; He knew that I was old and deaf, as well as old and poor; He must have been a Christian, for he led me boldly through The long aisle of that crowded church to find a pleasant pew. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... were—must have been long ago in their graves; some in the churchyard of the village, with those moss-grown letters embossing their names; some in the church itself, with mural tablets recording their names over the family-pew, and one, it might be, far over the sea, where his grave was first made under the forest leaves, though now a city had grown up around it. Yet here was he, the remote descendant of that family, setting his foot at last in the country, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and, I must confess, not a little to my discomposure, when I rose in the reading-desk on the day after this dinner with Dr Duncan, I saw that the Hall-pew was full. Miss Oldcastle was there for the first time, and, by her side, the gentleman whom the day before I had encountered on horseback. He sat carelessly, easily, contentedly—indifferently; for, although I never that morning looked up from ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... straight to the Squire's pew, and sat beside him with a face so full of innocent pride and joy that people would have suspected the truth if he had not already told many of them. Mr. Brown, painfully conscious of his shabby coat, was rather ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... pew, the first one on the right, close to the choir, and Madame Tellier sat there with her sister-in-law, Fernande and Raphaele, Rosa the Jade, and the two pumps occupied the second seat, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... married man, I were allowed to do so, for it has been pulled down to make room for the Hicks Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. When I did not dine there, I attended a quaint survival of last century's coffee-houses in Glasshouse Street: Tall, pew-like boxes, wooden tables without table-cloths, panelled walls; an excellent menu of chops, steaks, fried eggs, sausages, and other British products. Once the resort of bucks and Macaronis, Ford's ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... quietly and reverently, each passing at once to his own place, Andrew to his prominent pew at the side of the pulpit, Duncan to his modest seat behind the stove. They never addressed each other after entering the sanctuary, but sat with bowed heads in meditation and prayer until the commencement of the service. They generally had a long time ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... be held in the church—a not uncommon usage in country boroughs, but which from its rarity struck great awe into the Kingswell folk. The churchwarden was placed in the clerk's desk to receive votes. Not far off, the sheriff sat in his family-pew, bare-headed; by his grave and reverent manner imposing due decorum, which was carefully observed by all except Lord Luxmore ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... horses. Old Brick-Dusty climbed down to see a man in the tavern, and the Michigan contingent and Colonel Littlejourneys slid down the other side and went into Wythburn Church. There isn't another church in England so peculiar and so interesting. A pew is marked sacred to Wordsworth, and one also to Harriet Martineau, who I did not know before ever went to church. The silver service was the gift of Southey, and is inscribed with his name and crest. Southey was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... great use, as it serves to convey the most secret intelligence, which a lady would be ready to burst with, if she could not find vent for it by this kind of auricular confession. A piece of scandal transpires in this manner from one pew to another, then presently whizes along the channel, from whence it crawls up to the galleries, till at last the whole church hums ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... spoiled was she: A word, and all her life is changed! His wavering love too easily In the great, gay city grows estranged: One year: she sits in the old church pew; A rustle, a murmur,—O Dorothy! hide Your face and shut from your soul the view— 'Tis ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... would have done me any good in that horrible place of thick walls. The butler produced a key, and unlocked a small, private door at the side of the chapel which led from the apartments of his lordship to the family pew. Then taking my husband by feet and shoulders, Lord Rantremly and the butler carried him out, locking the door, and leaving the clergyman and me prisoners in the chapel. The reverend old gentleman took no notice of me. He seemed to be dazed, and when at last I found ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... white-capped carver. We watched the process—as did every one present—with an interest not entirely gluttonous, for it added a pleasant touch to the picturesque old room, with its sanded floor, its homely, pew-like boxes, its high-backed settles and the friendly portrait of the "great lexicographer" that beamed down on us from ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... fellow boarder, thinking that perhaps she might find some leisure before the service to perfect herself in her lesson for the following day, thoughtlessly took along with her a volume of French plays by Voltaire. During the service someone in a near pew observed the author's name upon the book, and forthwith the Morristown populace was startled to hear that among Madame Chegaray's pupils was a follower of the noted infidel. It took some time to convince the public that this book was carried to church by my schoolmate without her ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... from me, in the corner, and so in the shadow of a tall pew. Beyond her was a row of milkmaid beauties, red of cheek, free of eye, deep-bosomed, and beribboned like Maypoles. I looked again, and saw—and see—a rose amongst blowzed poppies and peonies, a pearl amidst glass beads, a Perdita ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... could agree upon no candidate for settlement. They demanded the respectability of belief with the showy talents of skepticism,—an impossible combination, at least for a parish which offered only eight hundred dollars and a decrepit house. At length Colonel Prowley took a pew in the Orthodox Church;—it was a temporary arrangement, he said, to be terminated whenever a settled minister should be provided ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Catholics had attained sufficient power to suppress Protestantism. Mr. Mayor was therefore informed that the declaration would not be read. On Sunday morning (August 11) when the omission had been made, the Mayor left his pew, and, stick in hand, walked up the aisle, seized the minister, and caned him as he stood at his reading-desk. Scenes of such a nature did not occur every day even in 1688, and the storm of indignation and excitement among the members ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... with it as I remember, was in a Methodist chapel in Staffordshire, England, where three small boys, including myself, prisoned in an old-fashioned high-back pew, were endeavouring to relieve the apparently endless ennui of the service by eating surreptitious apples. Suddenly upon our three young heads descended what seemed like a heavy block of wood, wielded by an ancient deacon who did not approve of boys. We were, each of us, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... and he'll make each and every man, woman and child think they're it in less'n a month. If anybody gets disgruntled, you sic John Henry here on 'em, and you'll have 'em come right back a-runnin', and payin' their pew ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... out now few hue hour cow mew blue flour bow new June trout plow Jew tune shout owl pew plume mouth growl hue pure sound brown glue flute mouse ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... in his place to begin morning service, and wondering to see the congregation so good on such a day, was suddenly startled, as his eye travelled mechanically over to the Hall pew, usually tenanted by Mrs. Darcy in solitary state, to see the characteristic figure of the squire. His amazement was so great that he almost stumbled in the exhortation, and his feeling was evidently shared by the congregation, which throughout ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... M—— forgave her the clerkship, forgave her even her undoubted success in making money, on account of Mrs. Greymer. It had watched Therese grow from a slim girl, with black braids hanging down her white neck as she sat in the "minister's pew" of the old brick church, into a beautiful pale woman in a widow's bonnet. Therese went now every Sunday to the same church where her father used to preach. The countess accompanied her most decorously. She was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... who has inherited the disease, or of a person who has suffered from its obscurer symptoms, there may be produced a "reaction." This may take the form of "a large, indurated, reddish papule" which in a pew days become of a dark, bluish-red colour; or the inflammation may be of a severer type, resulting in a "pustule." A positive result is more frequently obtained when the disease is of long standing, or comparatively inactive. But may ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... John," he exclaimed. "I'm tickled to death. And I'll tell you this: If you can't get a client no other way I'll—I'll break into the meetin'-house and steal a pew or somethin'. Then you can defend me. Eh . . . And now what about a place for you to eat and sleep?" he added, ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... moment, without "respect of persons" the most aggravated and unendurable? And what would become of that most pitiful, silly, and wicked arrangement in so many of our churches, in which worshippers of a dark complexion are to be sent up to the negro pew?[20] ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... was received in this surprising manner from persons apparently well, they began to be exceeding shy and jealous of every one that came near them. Once, on a public day, whether a Sabbath-day or not I do not remember, in Aldgate Church, in a pew full of people, on a sudden one fancied she smelt an ill smell. Immediately she fancies the plague was in the pew, whispers her notion or suspicion to the next, then rises and goes out of the pew. It immediately took ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... respectively, the former going into the right hand gallery, the other into the left, exceptions being however made in behalf of the owners of the square pews, who enjoyed the privilege of having their families with them in the house of God. Across the middle of the end gallery Dr. Partridge's square pew extended, so that by no means might the occupants of the two side galleries come within whispering distance ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... In addition— Pa will let me do it: There's a living In his giving— He'll appoint me to it. Dreams of coff'ring, Easter off'ring, Tithe and rent and pew-rate, So inflame me (Do not blame me), ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... to keep the Dissenters up to the mark! And there was Lady Montfort and Lady Roehampton never absent on a Sunday, and their carriages, it was whispered, were often suspiciously near to St. Rosicrucius on week-days. Mr. Sidney Wilton too was frequently in Lady Roehampton's pew, and one day, absolutely my lord himself, who unfortunately was rarely seen at church—but then, as is well known, critical despatches always arrive on a Sunday morning—was successfully landed in her pew by Lady Roehampton, and was very much struck indeed by what he ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... there was hardly a person above the laboring class except in the minister's pew and that belonging to the Castle, which had been newly lined and cushioned, and in a corner of which, safely deposited by Malcolm, the little earl now sat—sat always, even during the prayer, at which some of the congregation ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... common, innocent iniquities (innocent from their very antiquity, having been bequeathed from sire to son) which men perpetrate six working-days in the week, and after, lacker up their faces with a look of sleek humility for the Sunday pew—consider all this locust swarm of knaveries annihilated by the purifying spirit of Christianity, and then look upon London breathing and living, for one day only, by the sweet, sustaining truth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... It would appear almost as though some men will not see that churches are not built for clergymen to preach in, and live (or starve) upon the pew-rents, but for laymen to hear God's word and ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... said that Washington had no library, which accounted for his originality. He was a vestryman in the Episcopal Church; and to see his tall and graceful form as he moved about from pew to pew collecting pence for Home Missions, was a ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... Murphy's aim, and often was he washed out on to the sands in a smother of spindrift, in his mad eagerness to attain his end. The herring-gulls were the finest sport of all, with their constant melancholy cries—"pew-il," "pee-ole," or their hoarser note of warning, "kak-k-kak"; their bodies two feet in length; their spread of wing no less than four feet four. For months he chased them, till at last some must possibly have known ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... Crapwell an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb an' I, an' some more. An' I took 'Leven back in with me. An' as soon as I see Jennie I see it was Jennie come back—hair just as natural as if it was church Sunday mornin' an' her in her pew. We all knew it was so, an' we all said so, an' Mis' Crapwell, she just out cryin' like she'd broke her heart. An' when the first of it was over, she went acrost to 'Leven, an' 'Oh,' s'she, 'you've give her back to me. You give her back. God bless you!' she says to her. An' ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... with your letter that I kissed every word once, and the dear little scratch, that meant your name, about a dozen times. Yesterday was Sunday, and I went to church. Just in front of me sat a dear little girl so like you, that I wanted to lift her over the back of the pew and kiss her. She was such a little thing, that she did not know how to sit still. She had on a pair of worsted sleeves, and the very first thing she did, was to poke all the fingers of one little hand through the ruffle round the other, just as you do with your sleeves. Then ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... one felt a more lively interest than did the parish clerk, who, in showing them to a pew, had noted the tenderness with which they regarded each other. It needed nothing more to persuade him that they were eloping lovers, and that a snug gratuity was as good as in his pocket. All through the service he fidgeted impatiently in the shadows near the door, and as soon as the congregation ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... of that lady leading her to follow her own impulses, which were mostly in opposition. So, when perchance she visited the Hall, she chose not to accompany the squire and his subservient guests to Fenhurst, but made a point of going down to the unoccupied Wrexby pew. She was a beauty, and therefore powerful; otherwise her act of nonconformity would have produced bad blood ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sent her S. O. S. into the air and with supreme confidence that it would reach Martin wherever he might be, left the window, went to the pew in which Gilbert had arranged the cushions and sat down... Martin had grown tired of waiting for her. She had lost him. But twice before he had answered her call, and he would come. She knew it. Martin was like that. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... Archaeological Association as one of the secretaries (1844-9) under the presidency of Lord Albert Conyngham (the late Lord Londesborough). That recently-deceased nobleman was one of Mr. Croker's most attached friends, and opposite his Lordship's pew in Grimston church, Yorkshire, a neat marble tablet was erected bearing the following inscription: "In memory of Thomas Crofton Croker, Esq., the amiable and accomplished author of the 'Fairy Legends of Ireland,' and other works, ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... (1) pedal, pedestrian, pedestal, expedite, expediency, expedition, quadruped, impediment, biped, tripod, chiropodist, octopus, pew; (2) centiped, pedicle, pedometer, velocipede, sesquipedalian, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor |
